Mortal secret of Georgian prison

2011-03-28 21:48

There is an impression that the current governing top of Georgiaconsists of losers. Should they be on the turf, the horse they would choose would inevitably come last. How else can one explain the fact that any highly-praised and promoted "project" initiated by authorities turns out a shameful nothing? It is said that Sakartvelo has got the best policemen in the world but it is immediately

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reported that they beat children and send them to prison. It is said that the country is half a step towards NATO but it turns out that its way to NATO is as long as a way to the Moon. The famous Georgian prisons have been trumpeted by the press, while if reality, prisoners die of tuberculosis there.

Twenty-first century, a democratic Georgia reaching towards the shining peaks, the most advanced president in the world and the most efficient government. That's what the Georgians hear about on TV day by day, read in newspapers and learn on the local news sites. Day by day it is knocked into their heads that life is just wonderful and will be more wonderful still and even the worst of you, the criminals who are serving a sentence in prison, live in a real paradise. Just recently, Khatuna Kalmakhelidze proudly said that now each prisoner may receive qualified medical treatment, which is even better than outside the prison.

However, it turns out that prisoners are rotting away alive behind the walls of so much praised prisons that hardly differ from sanatoriums in the officials' speeches. They cough with blood and die of tuberculosis, a disease of tramps and vagabonds who have never seen medical treatment in their life. While Khatuna solemnly tells about the Ministry for Execution of Sentences, Probation and Legal Assistance adopting foreign experience, prisoners dies of consumption as in past-century pits or medieval jails.

That's a shame. In a modern world, with the modern level of medicine, such fate may befall only those who have been abandoned by the entire world. It looks like the true problems of the Georgian prisons remain unsettled while Khatuna is thinking where to stick another advertising label and what to surprise the journalists with. Such unglamorous topic as tuberculosis seems unfit to be touched by soigné fingers of the fastidious lady-minister.